Assessing Iraqi University Students’ Ability to Interpret Structural Ambiguity
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This research is devoted to study the structural ambiguity. By definition, ambiguity is a linguistic phenomenon in which a given text has more than one meaning or interpretation. Thus, this study aims for:
- 1. Assessing Iraqi university students’ ability to interpret structural ambiguity at colleges of education/ English departments in three universities Tikrit, Kirkuk, and Al-Anbar.
- 2. Finding out the comparison of the students’ ability to interpret structural ambiguity at both the recognition and production levels at the three universities: Tikrit, Kirkuk, and Al-Anbar.
The participants were three hundred and seventy-five undergraduate students in the fourth year of study in the Departments of English, Colleges of Education, University of Tikrit, University of Kirkuk, and University of Al-Anbar. The research was conducted during the first semester of the academic year 2021-2022. The data was gathered by using a diagnostic test to assess students’ ability to interpret structural ambiguity. The results of the study revealed that there are statistically significant differences among Iraqi university students’ ability to interpret structural ambiguity.
Metrics
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
College of Education for Humanities, TIKRIT UNIVERSITY. THIS IS AN OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE UNDER THE CC BY LICENSE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
References
Al-Hamash, K. I., Al-Jubouri, A. J., & Al-Hiti, W. M. (1982). Testing Guide for Teachers of English in Iraq. A Publication of the Institute for the Development of English Language Teaching in Iraq. Celce-Murcia (2001). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (3 rd ed.). United States: Dewey Publishing Service. Cronback, LJ (1963).“Course Improvement through Evaluation”. Teachers.
Anastasi, A. (1976). Psychological testing.
Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Sorensen, C., & Razavieh, A. (2010). Introduction to Research in Education. Canada: Nelson Education, Ltd.
Baker, C. L. 1989. English Syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Bell, W. A. (1981). An Investigation of the Validity of the" Primary Measures of Music Audiation" for Use with Learning Disabled Children. Temple University.
Brown, H. D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices (Vol. 10): Pearson Education White Plains, NY
Bucaria, C. (2004). Lexical and Syntactic Ambiguity as a Source of Humor: The Case of Newspaper Headlines.
Bushman, H. (1996). Lexikon der sprachwissenschaft. Taylor & Francis.
Celce-Murcia, M., & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and Context in Language Teaching: A Guide for Language Teachers. Cambridge University Press.
Chierchia, G. (81). McConnell-Ginet (1990) Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics.
Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational Research: Planning. Conducting, and Evaluating, 260, 375-382.
Crystal, D. (2011). A Dictionary of Pinguistics and phonetics. John Wiley & Sons.
Dawood , Najim Obied .(1984). “Syntactic –Error in Composition made By Students of the Department of English at the College of Education'' Unpublished Thesis .University of Baghdad .
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2013). An Introduction to Language. Cengage Learning.
Genesee, F., Upshur, J. A., & Richards, J. C. (1996). Classroom-Based Evaluation in Second Language Education. Cambridge University Press.
Georfien D.S. (ED.).(2002) On the Consequences of Meaning Selection: Perspectives On Resolving Lexical Psychological Association.
Hanlon, B., & Larget, B. (2011). Samples and Populations. Department of Statistics University of Wisconsin—Madison, 14(2), 10-22.
Heaton, J. B. (1988). Writing English Language Tests. 2nd Ed. New
Hirst, G. (1988). Semantic Interpretation and Ambiguity. Artificial Intelligence, 34(2), 131-177.
Hudson, G. (2000) Essential Introduction Linguistics. London: Blackwell Publishers.
Katz, J. J. (1977). The Advantage of Semantic Theory over Predicate Calculus in the Representation of Logical form in Natural Language. The Monist, 60(3), 380-405.
Kaufer, D. (1983). Metaphor and Its Ties to Ambiguity and Vagueness. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 13(3-4), 209-220.
Lado , Robert (1975) . Linguistics Across Cultures .Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Mehren , W. and Lehman I. J. (1984) Measurement and Evaluation in Education and Psychology. New York.
Oaks, D. D. (2010). Structural Ambiguity in English: An Applied Grammatical Inventory. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Palomba, C. A., & Banta, T. W. (1999). Assessment Essentials: Planning, Implementing, and Improving Assessment in Higher Education. Higher and Adult Education Series. Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA 94104.
Pinkal, M. (2013). Logic and Lexicon: the Semantics of the indefinite (Vol. 56). Springer Science & Business Media.
Tilden, F. (2009). Interpreting our Heritage. Univ of North Carolina Press.
Tourangeau , Roger .(1999) . Survey Methodology . New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons , Inc.
Valett , Robbeca M . (1977). Modern Language Testing . 2nd ed : New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanouich Inc.Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, FL 32887.
Yule, G. (2020). The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press.